


at the shoreline I stand washed

by leiascully



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Community: dogdaysofsummer, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-06
Updated: 2006-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you know about salt?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the shoreline I stand washed

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Marauders  
> A/N: Prompts were blood/salt/sea. The title is from Bree Sharp's "Walk Away".  
> Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ and all related characters are the property of JK Rowling and Scholastic. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

Sirius, standing on the sand, licks at his windburned lips and remembers sitting on the floor of the library playing with crystals of rock salt. His mother had come in, tasteful in black with a handful of diamonds at her throat, and scooped him up with a sniff. "That isn't for you, Sirius. I told your father he shouldn't keep it around, when he'd taken it from some fool who thought it would save him. It is unsubtle, vulgar magic best left to Mudbloods who have no other avenue." Even at five, she had spoken to him this way, and he remembered the stiffness of her arms as she held him. He had kept one crystal in a small sticky palm, even after she had put him back in the nursery and given him one of the very appropriate toys. He did not know where the nanny had been, but he remembered that he had held onto the salt all day, had kept it under his small pillow for a month after, touching it to his tongue now and again until it had been worn away. The taste of salt comforts him, though the ground under his feet is unsteady and the waves wash over his feet. The sun is going down over the water.

Remus, behind him, avoids the water but he can still feel the tug of the waves. He thinks it is a side effect of the lycanthropy, another link to the moon, which is a mocking sliver in the sky. Remus can feel the heaviness of the moon in its gravid darkness like a portent despite the weeks he has left. He has startled Peter and James by knowing when the tide is in or out without looking, though the Potters' cottage is almost on the water and they should know by the smell of the air. He and Sirius are bare to the waist in their well-worn trunks and bronzed by sun and wind, proper strong English youth, he thinks. James and Peter have gone off to town with Lily and Amelia for the evening, but Sirius has been curiously reticent to pull this summer, brooding on the beach more often than taking his new motorbike out. Once or twice he has gotten an owl from Regulus. Remus does not ask to read the letters and Sirius does not offer, but he does stay closer to Remus for days afterward, a little quieter than usual.

Sirius licks his lips again and now they have cracked: there is the copper and salt tang of blood along with the brine, a different kind of salt, and he wonders that he has never known before how salty blood is. He must have tasted it before, he has been in fights and had split lips and bloody noses, sometimes at Regulus' fist. He bleeds for his own blood. But he has been a traitor to that blood, first by wearing a scarlet tie rather than green, and then by abandoning his noble house for the Potters' friendlier, messier home. He sighs into the crash of the waves.

Remus hears the sigh, barely, with his werewolf's unnatural ears that are perhaps the greatest blessing of his curse. He puts a hand out tentatively: Sirius is unpredictable and has brushed off comfort with a brusqueness bordering on violence, but Sirius' shoulder only tenses and relaxes under Remus' fingertips. "Moony," he murmurs, "what do you know about salt?"

"It's a ward," says Remus, moving slightly closer. It is growing chilly on the beach and the only heat radiates from his skin and Sirius'. "Its protective powers are thought to derive from the crystalline structure and the purity of the salt. If you want it for magic, it's best to use kosher salt, but table salt will do in a pinch. There's also sea salt and black salt. Necromancers use it when they want to prepare an Inferius. It's an essential nutrient important to cells and osmotic membranes. You can use it to cure meat or make things tasty. Lot's wife became a pillar of salt."

"I don't know half those words," says Sirius, looking off across the horizon. "Why do you know those words? Sounds like Muggle science."

"I read."

Sirius sighs again, a deeply unhappy sound, and turns suddenly to rest his chin on Remus' collarbone. "We were late but bronzy nymphs a larking," he says, muffled and mournful.

"We were never nymphs," says Remus, all goosebumps suddenly and awkward. He does not know what to do with his arms, one awkwardly around Sirius' shoulders now that he's turned, and one awkward by his side. "And you both bronze and lark much better than I do. And you should leave the literature to me. I don't even think that is literature."

"I absorbed it, your literature," says Sirius into the hollow of Remus' collarbone. "Osmotically perhaps."

"You don't even know that word," says Remus, still unsure about the arms. Sirius is not really resting against him, just the point of his chin notched almost painfully into Remus' clavicle and one bare hip wedged against the bone of Remus' hip where both their trunks have slipped and the tentative weight of his arm over Sirius' shoulders. The sea pulls at Remus' bones and the sand slips under his feet, but he will topple them both if he falls. Remus stands steady against the sea though his blood yearns for it.

"I've read," says Sirius. "Moony, my blood is full of salt. I think I am becoming your Lot's wife."

"Everyone's blood is full of salt," says Remus, and folds his arms at last around Sirius. "Your blue blood and my werewolf blood and everybody else's."

"My blood is red as anyone's," says Sirius fiercely, trembling in the circle of Remus' arms. "Just as red as yours and just as dangerous, if blood will tell." His breath is shaky against Remus' throat, and his aristocratic cheekbone rests against the artery, so that Remus can feel his own pulse where Sirius touches him. "Why am I a traitor if their blood is full of salt?" His hands are at the small of Remus' back, clenched fists now and now the flutter of open damp palms.

"Now then," says Remus uncertainly. He has been an only child and a quiet one, and this passion of Sirius' has always confounded him. He turns his mouth against Sirius' ear and murmurs into his hair, "now then," soothing and nonsensical. Under his lips, Sirius' hair is crusted here and there with salt from their swimming earlier, and there is sand caught in it too, and the smell of sunshine and youth. Remus breathes deeply despite himself and then his neck is damp and he realizes from the new shudder of Sirius' body that Sirius is crying. He pulls Sirius against him, fighting the sand, fighting the sea, fighting the new yearnings of his blood, murmuring nonsense against the delicate rim of Sirius' ear.

Sirius gulps for air like a fish against Remus' throat and then kisses him, just at the pale skin under the jawbone where there is salt and stubble but no tan. Remus freezes and his head lolls momentarily, but then his mouth is against Sirius' hard and Sirius flattens his hands against Remus' back and their kisses are enough to crack his lips again and their kisses are all salt, blood and tears, and the sea washes in around them. The fragment of thought goes through Remus' mind that they are too young for this, but his blood is thrumming in his ears and the breeze cools Sirius' tears on his neck and Sirius' mouth is better than literature even. Under the waxing sliver of moon they gleam like salt, unaware that the darkling tide will dissolve them.


End file.
